


The edge of everything

by Auseil



Series: Reparations [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-12 06:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13541277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auseil/pseuds/Auseil
Summary: A woman long forgotten finds her way through time and space to study the hidden paths of the Force. In her travels, she finds a broken creature and decides to take him with her.Deep inside she knows she will not keep him, but she doesn't care. Old habits may never die.





	1. The finding

**Author's Note:**

> I don´t own Star Wars, and this is just a fanfiction, I´m making no profits of it.

The woman approached at a steady pace, she knew the place, she had seen it in her mind.

 

She felt the trace of life and the promise of the edge in the discarded individual that was in front of her. There were other things, she knew his anger was going to be a problem if she didn´t act quickly enough. With ease she put him, all of him, apparently broken without repair in the portable medi-pod she had prepared, her own invention, similar to a bacta tank but one that could be used merely to keep the being inside in stasis. 

She made sure she acted in time, while he still was confused and unsure, while he still didn´t know what had happened to him.

Nobody else on the whole planet had been able to sense her, not through the Force and not through any sort of equipment. She had taken all precautions and her many cloaks had worked perfectly.

In less than an hour, they were on her ship, flying away from Naboo, in direction to the Outer Rim.

She could have done easily what she intended to do without taking him with her, but once she saw him, his guts coming out from him, his legs inexplicably twitching even when they were detached from his body, the sharpness of his determination to live cut through her in a way she hadn´t felt in... years? No, maybe centuries.

She thought for a moment to restrain him, even in this mangled state he could be very dangerous, especially with those horns, but she decided not to. Instead, she reached directly to do what she wanted to do, thinking that the strain of the act itself that she was going to perform would be enough to keep him quiet.

The edge. The place where life and death meet, the place that was smokey and clear, the lightless twilight, unexplainable and contradicting in a way that could thorn away your very sanity. Only the dying were meant to see this world, and only through passing, but she had found out this was the best place to find the Force in it´s most raw form.

For years after her own faked death, she had been determined to find the hand behind the Force, the moving mind that kept playing a game with or against its own will. Using her expertise as a healer, she had reached places where she could be close to those that were on the brink of the edge and used their connection to transit it herself. Sometimes she had brought her "patients" back and sometimes she had let them go, it all depended on them in the end. It wasn´t about the mourning friends and loved ones, and it had never been about their status or power, if they wanted to go through the veil they would and if they wanted to stay, she will bring them, and left them to fight whatever battles they have left.

She went deep into the edge and saw the visions of things that will pass and won´t, she saw how she had altered deeply the path of things but didn´t care, the Force was not a static thing and fate no more than a prejudice other people used to justify their actions, useless triumphs and petty tragedies in equal ways.

Usually, she didn´t have that much time to explore and even though the time altered in the edge, she couldn´t spend more than mere minutes, that could feel longer for her, but not for those around her.

But this time was different, she had came to Naboo looking for him, she had seen him before through the smokey veil and sensed three important things, that his time to transit the edge was getting closer and that he was a very strong force-user. Force-sensitives were especially good to keep her longer and could show her more things about the Force in their passing, but she had never had the chance to use the power of force-user, but the most important thing was his will. A lashing power full of violence and determination, it was going to make him transcend a state that should have been mortal for every other creature. He had suffered an attack that could and should have killed even the strongest among both Jedi and Sith, and yet he lived, not even grasping for life, but no, clawing and mauling for it with rabid intent.

It was this, his true power, that allowed her to see and hear things as she had never seen before. She had to maneuver through the red-tinted mist that clouded everything and she recognized it as his rage, but she got what she was looking for and even more, until she realized with apprehension, that she had overstayed. It was in that moment when she noticed that the will of this individual, was still so strong and powerful, than even the peace of death was eluding him. The revelation hit her like a wave of fire, if she didn´t help him fast, he was going to pull everything in her ship apart... even her.

With a sigh, she left the edge and went to work. She put syringes into him, cables and all her knowledge into his wrecked form. She spent hours and hours, working over him, inside of him. She managed to reach him through the Force, long enough to make him understand that she was going to help him and that she needed him to help with her. She labored alone, for she still held a certain mistrust towards droids and only employed them when it was strictly necessary, which in her case meant almost never.

Once she was finished, there was sweat on her brow and a type exhaustion she hadn´t felt in long a time. Maybe even from her youth, the kind of feeling that comes from having stretch beyond a known limit to touch a new height. Her whole body was tingling and her hands were shaking, but her patient, yes, her patient was breathing easily now. There was an instant when she thought he was going to jump and bite her when she first saw him frothing and observed how his saliva was mixed with blood. It was the moment when she connected his spine and column again, then she realized he had just bitten the insides of his mouth instead of screaming, later the bacta will take care of that, she thought, with a touch of something that could have been admiration in other people.

Once the body in front of her was whole again, she put him in the bacta tank and let him sleep there for a while. She took advantage of his fatigue to use her powers and tried to give him a dreamless sleep. His mind was so fractured and so broken, a fragile thing that was kept uneasily together only but a sheer power of will, that to her was even more impressive than all the tricks and wonders the Force itself could provide.

Then she went to rest and found herself dozing easily. Her last thoughts were a glimpse of something familiar she had sensed behind his rage, something other than defeat. The unmistakable trace of the angst and disappointment that could only came from betrayal.


	2. The awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this series in general, I´m going to take several elements from the old and the new canon and mixed them with some original interpretations, that goes for the main characters and the world in general, overall I really hope you would like the change that I made.

There was a moment of confusion and denial, a fleeting moment that had arrived unexpectedly and then there was just rage and fury.

There was also an excruciating pain, but somehow the rage had lessened it. The man...the creature that he had been...that he was? Was prone to anger and fighting, he could at least felt that, yet there was nothing else to try and piece what had happened. And then it came the cold in the form of a calming hand, he could tell the whole idea of peace had been an abstract idea for him in the best case, but mostly a thing that happens to other people. Before he couldn´t have been able to explain it, but it felt like the gush of a wind white and grey, and yet he fought it as if refusing fresh water in the middle of a desert was the most sensible action. Like a caged rabid creature, he tried to fight against the mysterious presence, but a firm hand raised to meet his aggression and for a while succeed easing the pain and so dulling at least in part the whole force of his anger.

There was a thing about that hand. It felt familiar, not like something he had known before, but it reminded him of someone else. Had anybody calmed him like that before? Had anybody ever reach the place behind his wrath and comforted him?

There was an energy about it, a way to move the...the thing that made him whole? He struggled with the concept. Then the presence was gone, but a bit of the coldness remain.

He wasn´t able to tell how much time went by, but in what could have been an eternity or an instant, the presence came to him again. This time it talked to him, without words or even emotions, it felt peaceful and neutral at the same time and it told him it was going to help him, the presence instructed him to redirect the force of his emotions towards surviving, it spoke of a time to come without the pain and it convinced him.

When he opened the eyes he didn´t even know he had closed, he found himself in a place full of bright lights and felt a searing pain in his middle. At that point he realized that there was someone else with him, he saw a woman, robbed in black with a touch of purple, her face was hidden behind a heavy cloak but he was able to see two long white braids falling on her chest.

She was working meticulously, using instruments to...his eyes went wide with the realization, she was putting him together again. His body had been cut in half, but what happened later was even more strange than the very sight of seeing such a gruesome mutilation. Using her bare hands, she touched his insides, and made them regenerate in parts that had been burnt or cut, she grasped his hips and in one swift motion re-attached them to the rest of him. He felt the sensation of growing bones, and every nerve below his waist blazed with agony. A part of him told him not to scream, not to trash, told him that any demonstration of suffering was beneath him. He bit the insides of his mouth hard and long, and finally, when he could feel whole, he let go without noticing he had been frothing.

He didn´t see exactly what she did, but suddenly he felt himself being transported, not so far from where they were to a watery place, the woman managed to put a mask over his mouth and left him there. The liquid was slightly warm and she seemed to speak again with him through an intangible bond. She told him to sleep and soon darkness took him, he still was too disoriented to ask questions and too tired to remember who or what he was, and the sweet promise of rest lured him into oblivion.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------

 

She woke up calmly and relaxed. Looking at the controls of the ship, she realized that she had slept longer than she usually did.

The woman left her spartan bedroom to see her guest and patient. And this time, she did take a good look at him.

He was a zabrak, that much was obvious, his head had the characteristically crown of horns of his species and his skin was of a deep red color, she had seen him like that in her visions. She smiled despite herself at the vanity of others, the Jedis thinking that with their browns and light tones were closer to the life and everything that´s luminous and the Sith, so over dramatic in their tendencies. They were both trying to impress others with their appearances, trying to project respect or fear into whoever they may encounter.

In the old days, the black tattoos covering his body were meant to be a statement of his allegiance to the Dark Side and his status as a Sith, to a trained eye they meant to represent that their bearer didn´t care to hide his position as a Sith Lord, and their intricate meaning represented how much pain a Sith could endure. The Master must make them using the Force and sparing no pain to the apprentice, as a way to test the loyalty of his or her pupil and to ensure the student is apt to deal with pain, no more like with torture. But to her in the end, they were still a sign of vanity, to show others what you could accomplish and what they could not. Even though she could not see them per se, she could still sense them through the Force as well as all the rest of him, actually, she could sense him even better because of them.

Truth be told, she had never seen a Sith that had so many, since most of them tried to cover as much skin as they could, but she knew that the old fashion had survived, so she had heard, among the night brothers from Dathomir. She suspected it had more to do with some sort of ritual of male passage and shook her head, it made sense especially because even his genitals had the black marks.

She had never had much care for any sort of liaisons, whether they be romantic or sexual. But she understood the appeal a strong and hardened partner could possess.

She was deep in her musings when slowly the zabrak opened his yellow eyes. He looked at her with apprehension and confusion but she managed to soothe him, reassuring him that the bacta tank was going to help him to finish his treatment. It was then when she realized that the impact of what had happened to him had fragmented his mind, he wasn´t able to form sentences, but she could feel his emotions and ideas through the Force.

"A mind is a treacherous thing to mend" She thought. You never knew when dark memories could flow back, you could never be sure after a great trauma what kind of person was going to resurface. She had seen great warriors covered in terror from nightmares, afraid of every shadow, and apparently soft and inoffensive creatures turn into adamant beings.

She took her time to examine him, to search for his name and something she could use. She left him feel that she had no ill intentions, but the turmoil of his mind was too big.

She wanted to let him rest a bit more, besides they were going to reach their destination soon and she would rather try to restore his psyche in a more secure place than in her own space-ship.

She was going to let him sleep when he reached for her mind and posed her a question, or at least something close to one.

He wanted to know what she was, who she was. He questioned his own identity and yet she saw, he wanted to at least have some footing.

She let him see her face, her long forgotten eyes, and her pale skin, saying a word through the bond and with her mouth.

"Kreia."


	3. The arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments make my day!

The woman. Her skin so white and her lips so dark. He didn´t know her, but had he known someone like her?

"Kreia."

The name meant nothing to him at first, but it felt like an anchor. In the fog of his bewilderment, it gave him something to hold onto.

Again, she reached to him, to help him sleep, she explained to him they were going to land soon and went into the cabin, where she took a seat next to the pilot droid.

She needed the droid to help her pilot the ship, but it was never supposed to speak unless she asked it a question or an emergency and that seldom happened.

She was still debating against herself what to do. Did she miss company so much that she needed to bring ... to bring what?

A guest? She had never entertained company in this place, and couldn´t imagine herself doing it. A new project? To see if she could heal such a mangled creature, but to what extent? And she wasn´t thinking about his body. She knew there were traumas there, much more things dwelling deep than the act that had him ripped apart. She could see clearly he the scars of his gnashed soul. What good, what mercy would be to restore a thing that was already so ruined?

Would she use him as a pet? Would she put him to do her menial tasks? In his determination, she could see he had been a creature with honor. Maybe he would feel so grateful to her for saving his life, that he would be willing to give it to her.

No, she didn´t want to have guests and she wasn´t seeking new challenges. And definitely, she didn´t need an errand boy.

There was another possibility. Of few things she had missed from her old life, there was an act that she had loved, but she was sure she was never good at it, judging by the results she had achieved. She could see that if she decided to take that route with him, she would still find disappointment at the end.

An apprentice. It had been so long since the last time Kreia had tried to teach another, to have someone look at her with awe and desire to learn.

She didn´t think he could be the sort of philosophical type that would pay attention to her conundrums, in the end, his mind could be lost forever and he would be another savage creature crawling around the caves of the planet, until another, stronger and deadlier would put an end to his misery.

No, she wouldn´t let that happen. She would give him a swift dead instead of abandoning him. It was this reasoning that allowed her to make a decision. She didn´t see it as the right thing to do, not even as the logical one, it was instead what felt more natural and she went with it.

She was going to create an echo, that would go far far away, there was a hint of it in her last visions, yes she could discern them now.

And as the ship landed on Korriban, she could begin to feel the ripples in the Force. She hadn´t even cast the stone, and yet the universe was in motion, her arm was getting ready and the water was waiting.

 

\----------------------------------------------------

He could feel...voices...emotions, they were landing, he knew that. But the voices, where were they coming from?

They were like obscure whispers, and he couldn´t make any sense of what they were saying, but the emotions he understood. Anger, so much anger, but above all sadness an unbearable amount of sadness.

The whispers were familiar to him, not like the voices of long lost friends and loved ones, but more like the voice of his own mind. He recognized the emotions, because they were his, the feelings words of a past that was still clouded.

Once the ship landed, Kreia approached him again. She reached for his mind and asked him if he thought that he could walk and he tried to move his feet. He could feel his legs, he was going to walk.

She knew that another creature may have questioned the stability of its legs after all he has been gone through. But Kreia saw he was going to will his limbs to move and there was no doubt about it in his mind.

She prepared the tank for his exit and stood aside waiting for him to move, the only thing she did for him was to help him remove his mask.

With calculated and slow movements, he raised from the tank and put his feet on the ground. Somehow he knew she was not going to give him a hand and that comforted him, but he didn´t know why. The floor felt cold but he was grateful for the sensation. 

She wasn´t one for modesty, but she realized he couldn´t use his own clothes because she had cut them off his body and discarded them. More for the sake of convention, she gave him a spare robe that she had kept on the ship. At first, he looked at the piece of fabric with curiosity, but she made gestures to help him see what he had to do. In the end, he managed to use it more like a skirt, the upper part was too narrow for his ample torso, so he tore it and let it hang from his back. Kreia couldn´t care less about it.

She instructed him to follow her out of the space-ship, and once they were out, he felt the voices again, but with a renewed strength.

Kreia saw the zabrak looking in all directions, but told him through the bond to ignore the unseen ghosts.

Bare-footed and almost naked, he looked as if he was a natural part of Korriban, and the planet itself seemed to believe the same thing.

"The old lords in their tombs never knew when or how to let go." She thought and compelled him to follow her into a cave. The place was dangerous for many reasons, and a creature so strong in the Force could attract things more dangerous than mere specters. If everything went right, she would teach him later how to remove oneself from the prying minds of other force users.

His pace was slow, but with intent and she saw he was getting more and more comfortable with his body.

They walked into the cave, it was dark but she didn´t have a problem with that and he simply followed her through the bond, she knew he was feeling apprehensive, but soon they arrived at a steel door with a control panel. She absently pressed a few bottoms and then they were inside of...of what he didn´t know.

It wasn´t a lab nor some living quarters, but something in between. There was a place to sleep, a place to eat and some equipment. Excavated from the very mountain, he could see the red rocks on the walls. Even if she had no use for lights, Kreia turned them on to make him feel more in control, there was also a droid in one corner, one that she employed only for small and repetitive tasks, but it stood where it was, no greetings or salutations were offered as they got into the room.

She showed him a spot that she used for meditation, a large portion of the cave, devoid of any object and sat down, her legs crossed, and used the bond to make him do the same.

Kreia thought that it was a good thing she had found him so soon. With his powers, he may even have survived without her intervention, but the state of his mind would have been even worst and who knows what he could have done. He could still flee or attack her, of course, but he knew he needed her, and that gave her more confidence than all of her powers combined.

Once he sat on the floor, cross-legged in front of her, she asked him using the bond, what did he want.

The whole thing took him by surprise, it felt as if nobody had ever done that for him. He showed her that he wanted answers, that he felt so fractured and at the same time he was trying hard to see if he could remember her from somewhere.

She showed him that she could bring his memories back for him, but she questioned his desire for her to do so. The process would be painful and long, and she didn´t guaranty any success. It was a great risk, he could end up in the arms of the most excruciating insanity or he could have answers that could also prove to be dissatisfying and tormenting.

There was no doubt. There was no hesitation. He answered her in such a forceful way that she could feel goosebumps from it.

Kreia didn´t feel the need to ask him if he was ready, she knew he was and dove right and without preambles into his mind.


	4. The turmoil

His mind was a crimson turmoil, and Kreia knew she had underestimated the task ahead of her.I didn´t matter, she thought, she was going to overcome this enterprise and most important, he was going to do it. 

Her heart raced with the challenge, and she felt a strange emotion passing through her. Kreia knew that there are memories that are repressed and memories that are so old that they may as well be. A Force-user with enough control and skill could have access to them and use them to manipulate or help others. Yet, those memories weren´t always happy or nice, but she was sure that he needed to see them, that he needed to be able to judge them by himself to understand what had happened to him. She maneuvered carefully and reached him, at the very core of his feeble mind. 

"Search, I know you can do it. It´s your instinct to find, to hunt, find me the first thing you can remember, think about the smell and the texture, feel them, and take me to them."

 

He responded better than she had expected, she had judged him well. There was an old conditioning, something that resonated with her command and she thought "later, later we´ll get there." 

There was a woman, a human woman. Her skin was almost unnaturally pale and her head had short blonde hair, that was mostly hidden under a deep red cloak. There were black marks on her face and around her eyes, but they weren´t make-up, there were tattoos.She recognized the likes of her immediately, a Dathomiri Witch. Legends said that a long time ago, there had been an exiled Jedi, and she winced trying to push back a familiar memory, that had spawned many descendants, that in turn had been ensnared to the Dark Side, even though they didn´t call it like that. They believed in certain gods and used the Force to perform illusions that were said to be beyond the knowledge of both Jedis and Siths... and others things also, that were no mere mirages. 

Through several generations, they began to experience physical changes that were influenced by the power they drew from the Dark Side. They had allied, no they had subjugated the population of Zabraks from Dathomir and intermingled with them. Men were used for war and reproduction, she had heard that, but now she was hearing about the macabre tradition from one of them.

 

The woman was talking to another, a man her baby couldn´t see. Kreia was witnessing everything from the boy´s perspective and she could feel a terrible amount of sadness irradiating from the young witch, a pain felt like burning needles through her heart.She was begging him to take the child away. Kreia thought about all the countless babies that the Jedis had taken from their parents, with the promise of...of what, a better life?But this woman wasn´t talking to a Jedi, she was sure of it. 

She told the man about her sons, she had given birth to twins, and as soon as they were out of her womb, the father was murdered. It wasn´t an execution, he hadn´t committed any crime, but the tradition stated that to have male offspring was a sentence of death. She had hidden one of them for almost a year, an almost impossible thing to do, in order to prevent that the head of her coven could discover his existence.She felt a deep connection to this particular baby, a desperate love, as bright as the stars and as hopeless as a bird born without wings. 

She wanted to save him from a world of war and death, she wanted him to be the owner of his own destiny. And if that meant sending him as far away as she could she would do it without hesitation. She had felt the strange man presence on the planet, and she didn´t care what was he looking for, she just wanted to convince him to take her ...

"Maul"

 

There was a change in the maelstrom of his psyche when the woman revealed his name, but another even greater when she told the mysterious man that her own name was Kycina. It was the revelation of a long lost secret, so forgotten and at the same time so precious that it seemed impossible to believe one could not remember it.Kreia had felt that, long ago, searching deep within her own mind.

The voice of a mother she had never truly known, and her father´s tears falling to her cheeks, and after that firm and foreign hands whisked her away. She contained her anger for the sake of Maul, he didn´t need any more fury in this place.

 

"Maul, so befitting." She thought, and the name sounded right and wrong at the same time.

 

The man promised to take the baby with him, and when his face was revealed, she realized she had seen him before. But there were others things to attend now. In her desperation, Kycina asked a Sith to take her son, to save him. Had she ever found out how horrible was the fate she had chosen for Maul? Kreia wondered. 

When his face was revealed she heard a voice and the scenery changed. She saw, more than a memory now, more like he had imagined the interaction between his mother and the man, they were in a desert now and watching the man that was holding him. He was wearing the black robes she had taken away from him, and his expression was full of regret.

 

"Master."

His deep voice sounded sorrowful and for a moment she thought if this was truly the way he sounded in real life.

"I.." he began but didn´t continue.

 

"He took you with him. And he trained you, right?" Maul nodded."Can you show me?" 

 

Images began to flow at a fast pace in front of them. It occurred to Kreia that he couldn´t have been more than one year old when he departed from Dathomir.

There was a Planet that she recognized as Mustafar and there were scenes that depicted the trainings the boy had to endured to learn to use the Force. He had been a gifted child, but his abilities were more inclined towards the physical aspects of the Force rather than the mystical ones.The training had been ruthless, she saw as the boy was being prepared to become a living weapon. She thought that probably many of the Sith lords buried in the catacombs of Korriban would have even thought it was too much to impose such knowledge and strain upon a little boy, they wouldn´t object to the training itself, but even them would think the age wasn´t the right one. And yet, Maul had thrived under the pressure, he was by nature a resourceful and resilient individual. Even though there was an act, so frightening and heinous that for a moment she couldn´t believe it, she thought that it must have been a nightmare, but no, his master had used ashes from fallen Sith lords to pass onto him an unbearable hate towards the Jedis. They will talk about it one day, but not now, he had to resist, he had to continue, and she used her own strength to make him move on without dwelling too much into those ghoulish sensations that the unearthly ritual had left behind. 

 

But there was something lacking there and she could see it, Maul simply had been to young when his master took him away to know better and then he grew up tangled in a complex web of lies and half-truths that made impossible for him to see the reality.

 

She would have to talk to him later about it, she was sure he wasn´t seeing or feeling her thoughts, since she had been shielding her own mind from the beginning, but she realized that he had sensed a change in her.He was getting better at recovering his past, until they arrived at the moment he was placed in...in a home? It felt like that, the first and one true home he had ever experienced, the only time he had until that moment had experienced emotions that didn´t have to do with anger or pain, he had been hated by some, yes, but there had been respect, admiration and... another thing.

Through him she found out the place was called The Orsis Academy, an institution which purpose was to serve as a training ground for mercenaries, stealth agents and assassins. Her earlier suspicions were confirmed then.

"Later, later, we´ll get there later" She repeated as a mantra.

She saw the man in charge of the place, a Falleen named Trezza. He had known that Maul was at least a Force-sensitive, and during his time at the Academy, Maul was supposed to learn how to survive without using the Force, on the other hand, he had to relied in it while training with his master.Trezza had saved his life in one occasion, and had showed him respect and even admiration. 

Maul could argue with him, but appreciated the man as a capable individual. There was another one, Meltch Krakko, a Mandalorian. He had hated Maul from the very beginning, resenting the child for his natural talents and his secretive ways. No adult should ever treat children like that, Kreia thought. Maul wasn´t even an adolescent when Krakko had knocked him unconscious with one punch, simply because he didn´t like the way the boy had looked at him when he called him a liar for not revealing how could he jump so high, how could he endure so much. 

Inside these memories there was a lot of rage, but a tinge of regret too. She didn´t get at first what the last thing meant, until she saw them.A Nautolan female, strong of limbs and with scars in her arms, some years older than Maul. She had been a slave until she was able to scape and had ended up in the Orsis Academy. After graduating she had choose to remain as Trezza´s right hand. Her name was Kilindi Matako, and had been the first person to offered Maul a curious fruit he couldn´t describe, that he still couldn´t name. 

As soon as she appeared Kreia could feel a twinge in Maul´s mind. He was attracted to her, as a boy he had thought she was beautiful, without really knowing what he was thinking. And as a teenager he was infatuated with her, with her and with the other. 

Daleen was her name, a human female. She was not as strong as Maul and Kindili, but she was smart and her superiors thought that one day she could be an effective stealth agent or a well prepared spy. The girls liked each other, and they liked him. They had words for the things they felt and they weren´t afraid to experience their emotions. But they had set eyes onto a creature that had honed his passions with violence and that believed that anything other than the feelings revered by the Dark Side were useless or dangerous. 

There was a scene that was especially revealing for Kreia. A fifteen year old Maul was preparing himself for the final test at the Academy, that consisted on surviving alone, with only one weapon at the treacherous desert in Orsis. He was eager to kill, he wanted to eat raw meat, to drink warm blood and bathe his body in gore. When the girls arrived to wish him luck and to offer him advice, the atmosphere changed. The young Maul was almost drunk with their aromas. Kindili´s skin attracted him, Daleen´s dark hair enticed him, they were kind and good, and told to him that he must overcome the last test, to come back to them, they wanted to help him.They promised him a surprise to celebrate after his return, an obvious thing to Kreia but a mysterious one for him. 

Maul could phantom the shape of his desire, but the details eluded him.Kreia almost smiled to herself when she saw Daleen getting closer to Maul and caressing the back of his head without touching his horns. This was his first intimate touch, that was easy to see, but had it been the only one? 

The image changed and she saw him at the desert. Maul was happy, he had killed to eat, to survive and just because he was excited. It wasn´t a challenge at all, he was inside his element, he was so free and happy, only that he hadn´t been able to see it back then.Until they appeared. Mother Talzin, the leader of the Nightsisters, the witches of Dathomir. Maul had thought that everything was part of an elaborate test, but instead he had been given to the witches by Krakko and then he had sold them all to a Warlord from Rattatak. 

They had managed to escape until his master went to get him back.Kreia could feel the connection he hadn´t seen at first, and he knew now what then, what he had never suspected in his youth. Mother Talzin wasn´t just the leader of her coven. She was Kycina´s mother, he could see it through her signature in the Force.Maul had chosen to remain with his master, without even knowing who the witches were. Kreia couldn´t tell if that had been a blessing or a curse.Afterwards his master had told him that his position had been compromised due to Krakko´s actions, and ordered him to purge the entire academy. Every instructor and pupil would have to die and every single record of his stay there had to be destroyed.There was, the regret. He hadn´t questioned his master, but he had questioned himself. He had extinguished quickly the life of the other students, tasting the macabre power that only ending a life could provide. 

But the girls...that was different. Daleen died a quick and painless death and never knew what had hit her. He told himself at the moment, that he was fulfilling his duty. He was telling himself now that he had been a coward for not looking at her eyes. He had promised himself he was going to be strong. And when he stabbed Kilindi he let her know he was the one killing her. She smiled, how many horrible things had that young woman suffered, that she felt that dying at the hands of him wasn´t so bad. 

Maul then proceed to murder Trezza at his own office, the Falleen threw a knife to him, but he had simply caught it in midair and threw it back at his former teacher. The blade cut into an artery, and the splash of blood reached Maul´s face, adding more red to his visage. He had to convinced himself that those three deaths were meant to be, he had to extract the anger from his own self-hate, to tell himself he needed to be stronger,to be better and devoid his self of any lingering feelings. 

Krakko was another matter altogether. The Mandalorian shot him as soon as he was out from Trezza´s office, but using the Force and all his skills, Maul avoided every single one of his blaster bolts. With amazing speed, he grabbed his enemy by the throat and the sensation filled him with great joy, then, more than breaking it, Maul crushed Krakko´s neck with his bare hands and finally threw the corpse into a fireplace. Maul watched the spectacle, letting the smoke carried away the smell of burnt flesh until his clothes were impregnated by it.

For a moment Kreia thought that he was going to reap an arm or a leg from the burning body and start eating, but luckily that didn´t happen. 

Other visions came after that, his time as a saboteur, his first duel with a light-saber and the horrible encounters he had to endure when his master sent him to the most terrible prison in all the galaxy.It was in the last one that she saw how cunning he could be, and also that he wasn´t devoid of honor. That seemed to be a constant, for someone so ruthless, as he was. 

She began to feel tired, as she tried to calculate Maul´s age at the time. She saw him kill padawans, she saw him turned himself in more than a weapon. There were dancers in the galaxy that would never had his grace, they were surgeons who could only dream of having his precision and cold blood. The Force was strong with him, but his true power was his will. 

Kreia could tell the end was getting nearer and got ready, the trauma that had literally and figuratively split him in half was approaching.Ah, the fight. He was beautiful, more so than the Jedi and the padawan, he had killed the first one but lost to the apprentice. He didn´t understood, he couldn´t admit his failure and that almost threw her from her center. 

His voice was dripping with hate and shame, and Kreia could almost taste blood in her own mouth.

"I was weak."

"My master, he left me, he cut me off"

"Useless" 

"Left to die, left to rotten"

"I cannot feel him anymore" 

"What did he have that I didn´t?" 

"Why? Why? Why?" 

Kreia reached again towards him and soon they were on Dathomir, under the red sun, facing each other.

"You are not weak" 

"But I lost" 

There was a mix of madness, resignation and disconcert in his voice.

"You lost to yourself, not to the padawan. Your pride blinded you, and you toyed with him." 

"I want revenge I should have revenge!" She looked at him sharply and he felt as if she had slapped him.

"Will that bring anything back? Will Darth Sidious welcome you with open arms after you bring him that man´s head in a plate?" She knew who his master was, but only now she had said his name out loud and that took him by surprise.

"Who are you? What are you?" He wanted to know. 

"It doesn´t matter now. I will explain later. This is not about me and it´s not about him, it´s about you. What do you want? And how can you be so sure you really want it?" 

"Tell me" 

His will. It wasn´t made of iron, no, of course not, not something so simple. It was made of fire, all-consuming fire, nurturing fire. The heat that gave him life, and the flames that devoured anything he so desired. She felt compelled to tell him, to show him how low she had fallen, how high she had risen. Instead, she gave him a short answer.

"I am Kreia. There were other names, there were titles, but I was either stripped of them or discarded them myself. I was a Jedi and they betrayed me. I was a Sith and they went against me, even before the rule, even before Bane. I was for a long time the embodiment of that betrayal." 

"And now?" He believed her, and she amazed him.

"I am myself now. What can you tell me of myself that I do not know? What can you do to me, to make me tell you something that I do not wish to disclose?" Her voice was impassive and her demeanor was calm.

"Why are you helping me?" 

When he asked her that, she thought that there was still so much of that young man who didn´t know what kindness was.

"There is an answer, but it´s long and I don´t want to admit it. Know that I do it because I want to do it. That should suffice."

"I can steal your ship and look for the padawan, I know that his name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. I can have my revenge."

She smiled a bright and honest smile, almost a grin.

"You are welcome to take it if you can." 

Kreia decided it, if you have to believe in the impossible, at least you should know what it looks like. And she showed him, only a fraction of what she could do.Maul was taken aback. She was more powerful than him, she knew more techniques, that was obvious. But for an instant he was able to grasp a sense of her true power. He knew that Sidious had acted with restraint, that he had never seen the extent of his abilities, but this woman...

There was a saying from a distant planet, about an evil and astute creature, that was extremely powerful. But his real power came from his wisdom, and he was wise, not because he was a god, a spirit or anything like that, he was wise because he was old. And this woman, he thought, could make Darth Sidious look like a babe.

"What would you have me do?" 

She noticed in his voice a tone of reverence. He had earned the title of Darth after coveting it for years, but he still needed a teacher. 

And she had to admit, that despite all the years, the failures and the disappointments, she still longed for another student.

"Stay, or leave. It should be your choice." 

 

A with that, she went away, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken inspirations from several novels and comics that feature Darth Maul for this chapter and will do the same for the ones to come, but as you can see I had decided to change a few things, like leaving Kycina as his mother, but making Mother Talzin his grandmother. 
> 
> Please feel free to ask me any questions about the source material that I have used.
> 
> And as always, kudos and comments make my day!


	5. The appeal

Kreia rose and watched Maul, his eyes were still closed.

The silence was total as she waited.

He opened his eyes.

He looked at her and suddenly, realization fall upon him.

"You are blind."

Kreia smiled slightly.

"Really? That´s the first thing you want to say?" She understood though.

He fell silent again, trying to measure his next words.

His voice was deep and strangely soft, she thought it wouldn´t be so bad to break her auto-impose silence listening to him, but she didn´t think he was a very talkative person.

"Follow me" She spoke casually as if the thing they had done had been nothing to her more than a normal occurrence.

On the other hand, Maul felt tired and hungry.

The forgotten droid started working as if called by an unseen power. It was an old service model, but it had certain modifications, and Maul could see it was meant to be a silent servant.

The droid began to put food and plates on a small table and Kreia gestured for Maul to come and sit beside her.

There were only two chairs and for a moment Kreia couldn´t remember what had made her got two instead of just one. She wondered if she had a good reason while she was preparing her little hideout, that was meant to be only for one person, to bring another chair. "In case of what? Having a terentatek for tea?" She mused half-intrigued at her old decision.

Maul looked at her with unease. He had never shared a meal with his master, no his former master, he forced himself to think. Actually, he had never watched him doing anything that made him look like a common person. For all he knew, Darth Sidious may as well only live off the Dark Side of the Force.

Tentatively, the Zabrak sat opposite to Kreia and waited.

She began to eat slowly, and only then he did the same. He was ravenous and made a big effort to stop himself from devouring everything on the table.

"Eat as much as you want. Although, I had just realized you may not like my diet much. It´s been years since the last time I´ve eaten meat."

His species was carnivorous by nature, it wasn´t just a ritualistic thing, their bodies needed to eat meat in at least some measure to function properly and they both knew it. Sooner or later Maul would need to go out and got some, and that line of reasoning to him to ask more questions.

"Where are we?" He said between bites.

"Korriban is called, although it has many names."

Maul felt strange about it. That explained the voices he had heard earlier and the weird feeling about this place. Now he was able to put names onto his impressions. The whole planet felt like an angry cemetery, like stepping on the tombstone of a beast that was not quite as dead as one could expect. And yet, the place called to him.

Darth Sidious had talked to him about it, he hadn´t given him many details, but Maul knew it was situated in the Stygian Caldera, a large nebulosity that surrounded the former Sith Empire. The nebula served as a hyperspatial breakwater, that protected the worlds controlled by the Sith from attacks, but eventually had failed to preserve them from the exterior and their golden era had ended. Sidious had spoken about prosperous worlds, without the influence of the Jedis, that were proud and ultimately, part of Maul heritage, that long ago had been stolen away by the hypocritical Jedis and Supreme Chancellor Pultimo. Maul felt his anger raised again but tried to remain as calm as possible. He still needed more answers and he was sure his host wouldn´t be pleased if he started yelling.

"Why did you bring me here?"

She liked the sound of his voice. It had a nice echo in her little cave.

"In between my travels, this is the place I call ...Well, I guess «home» would not be a good word to name it. But this is the place where I live."

"You choose a cemetery to be your dwelling?" He was intrigued.

"Yes, I did."

"That doesn´t really answer my question."

"Aren´t you persistent?"

She explained to him about the Edge and about her travels, she told him how she had found him and that she had decided to restore him. She told him she was studying the Force, but not about her true purpose, not yet.

Maul was amazed. He didn´t know the Dark Side of the Force could be used to cure, he had always wielded it like a blade. "In the same way, my master had used me". He thought.

Kreia could see he was beginning to understand.

"I still don´t get it. Why did you save me?"

"You can´t comprehend if it was an act of mercy or do you think I´m trying to manipulate you?"

"There is no mercy among Siths."

"Ah but I´m no longer a Sith and I wonder, are you still one?"

"I´m disgraced." He said and his distaste for himself was evident.

"But are you a Sith or not?" There it was again, the teacher in her, asking all the questions that nobody wanted to hear, but they still needed. She was so engrossed in the conversation, that she hadn´t even noticed how much she had missed this.

"I... I had always been a Sith" It was like asking him if had ever stopped being a Zabrak, a sentient creature.

"What makes you a Sith?"

He didn´t know. He thought about the Sith code, he thought about his training and everything he had learned.

"I wish for power, for power will set me free"

"Free from what?"

"My chains"

"What chains? The chains that Sidious put upon you? The chains that the mere act of living entails and make us be bound to a body, a time and a space we haven´t chosen ourselves?"

Maul didn´t know what to say and without seeing them Kreia knew his yellow eyes must be as wide as saucers by now.

"Don´t you think I may simply have decided to help you because I thought it was the right thing?"

"No, I don´t. Compassion is just a lie the Jedis tell." He honestly replied.

"The Jedis believe compassion is a duty, even the most severe among them would take an immense pride in lowering themselves in front of others they deem weak and fragile."

Maul scoffed.

"But the Sith believe kindness and compassion are nothing but pity, an excuse the weak had created to install guilt in the mind of those more powerful.In a way they are right and in a way they are wrong. You can do more harm to people by helping them than you could have initially thought. Your torment of others can make them more resourceful and more apt to future events, at least that is true."

"Then, what is the answer?" Inquired Maul.

"Why should there be an answer?" She replied.

Maul fell silent again.

"The ultimate truth here, if you really want to look at it in those terms, is that your actions, once you had performed them, do not belong to you. They are part of the universe, of an intricate web of events that you cannot even begin to comprehend. Every time you chose to be kind or cruel, you have to think about it, what do the person or the people you´re facing can gain or lose from it. But at the same time, you can´t live your life doing anything because if you fear that the universe itself will implode only because you once said something wrong or something you did didn´t go quite as you expected, you may as well stop breathing. Every time, your choice should be yours, but you can only take the consequences of the things you did or said, you can´t be responsible for what any other creature do about it."

"So if I go out and murder an entire planet it wouldn´t be your fault because you saved me?" There was the hint of a dare in that sentence, she knew.

Kreia shrugged.

"You saved yourself, even though I may have not been there, I´m quite certain you would have found a way to survive."

"But you healed me. You helped me to recover my mind." It was a close as he was going to get to say thanks, Kreia suspected.

"Others could have done the same."

"There weren´t any others. There was you."

"There is a lesson there if you can see it."

"Are you teaching me now?" He said and sounded almost hopeful.

"Would you like me to?" She said somewhat amused.

"Must you answer me with more questions?" Now he sounded irritated, but that only made her smile.

"Yes. A good teacher has to know that the questions are as much as important as the answers, sometimes even more."

"Did you have many students?" He was genuinely curious.

"Yes."

"What happened to them?"

"I failed them, or at least I felt like that for years. Some of them died, others abandoned the Jedi Order because they couldn´t bear to be part of it any longer and they blamed me for that, they said I had opened their eyes and would have preferred living in a blinding light than seeing shades of gray for all their existence. I stole their ignorance and gave them misery in exchange. Others turned to the Dark Side, where I myself ended up years later, and even there my own apprentices betrayed me. The worst thing is that I know they didn´t do it for power, they did it because they weren´t able to understand me and that, as a teacher was my biggest and most terrible flaw."

There were honesty and sadness in her voice, two things he thought had never sensed from Sidious.

"It took me so long to understand that they were their decisions. I may have influenced my pupils, but I didn´t make any choice from them. Can you see it? My own pride had me think of me as such a great force, that I could corrupt everyone just by talking? An agent of corruption itself walking in human form. And for a while, I thought of myself as the very embodiment of betrayal, for I was betrayed twice and in turn I betrayed myself. And first of all, I had betrayed me, because I hadn´t been able to be as good a teacher as I had always wanted to be."

Her dead eyes found his, and fog met fire. Maul knew she couldn´t see him, but nevertheless, she was indeed watching him.

"If you must, open the door and take my ship. Go back to that man that had betrayed you or go and hunt the one that you think is the sole responsible for your current state."

"Or?"

"Stay"

She didn´t say anything else. Kreia didn´t offer him knowledge, not power. But he saw she didn´t need to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments make my day!
> 
>  
> 
> Also if there is any beta out there interested in helping me with this story and the next one, that would be great. Especially if it´s someone interested in a Maulidala story.


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